


398. stairway to heaven

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [248]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 10:44:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10093631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “Sarah,” she says. “I did it. I can do it. Everything. You said you would keep me if I took the bad men away, and I am doing this. I want to be good.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is like...sort of S1-era, I guess? Don't think too hard.
> 
> [warning: reference to self-harm]

On the best days, Sarah lets Helena come inside. She never gets to go up the stairs, or down the other stairs, but she can go into the loveliest kitchen she’s ever seen and sit down in one of the wooden chairs at the table. Sometimes Sarah feeds her. It’s the happiest Helena has ever been in her life.

Today is a very good day, and she is sitting at the table, and there is a sandwich made with bread so white she’s scared to touch it. There is dirt all over her fingertips. (It is not the worst thing on her fingertips, right now.) What if she ruins it?

Instead of touching the bread she lays out photographs on the table. Men in suits, lying on the floor, their eyes all open and surprised. Neat bullet hole in each of their foreheads. Click. Click. The best thing about learning to use a camera was learning that the camera shutter made the same sound as a trigger. This way she can kill them twice. This way she can make each death real, and solid, and enough for Sarah to be proud of her.

Sarah is sitting on the other side of the table. She looks faintly sick. If Helena is good, if Helena is good enough, someday Sarah will let Helena reach out and touch her. She wants to. Sarah doesn’t need to look sick. Helena is her knife, and Helena can do these bad things, and they don’t have to be bad for her at all.

“I found more,” she says. “More bad men.”

Sarah looks up. “Great,” she says, in a faint sick little voice. Helena’s mouth twists down.

“Sarah,” she says. “I did it. I can do it. Everything. You said you would keep me if I took the bad men away, and I am doing this. I want to be good.”

“I know,” Sarah says, her voice like her voice when Helena wrapped her hands around Sarah’s thr—

“Hey, stop that,” Sarah says sharply, and she’s reached out and grabbed Helena’s wrist before Helena’s hand can hit her face again. “You’re – you’re doing fine. You’re fine.” She drops Helena’s wrist like it’s a razor blade and she’s too scared of God to use it. Helena can feel the marks of Sarah’s fingerprints in her skin. If she hurried right now she could cut them in forever. But that would make Sarah more upset, probably, so she doesn’t.

The front door opens and shuts. Sarah’s eyes go wide and there is a knife in Helena’s hand before she even remembers that there was a knife in the pocket of her coat. Sarah’s eyes are even wider on the knife. Helena remembers that there is still blood on it, the knife – she keeps remembering things too late to help them, but she’s remembering the way the light had vanished from the woman’s eyes and that was good, she’s the light, unless she isn’t anymore, she needs to ask Sarah but Sarah is too busy clenching her hands tight on the tabletop and—

A woman standing in the doorway. “Sarah,” Helena says, but she’s interrupted:

“What is this,” says the woman in the doorway, sharp.

“S,” Sarah says, “this is Helena.”

There is a knife in S’ hand. There is a knife in Helena’s hand. Helena imagines, with a giddy jolt of joy, that maybe S wants to fight her – that they can fight to the death for Sarah, and whoever wins will get to put their head on Sarah’s knee and have Sarah tell them that they did so well. She’d like it either way, really. She would die for Sarah. She would go up against that knife for the chance to let Sarah touch her again, and have it be gentle, and have her mean it.

“Stop,” Sarah says. “Both of you, just – stop.”

“You let her into our _house?_ ” S says, and Sarah turns to Helena and says: “Don’t move.”

Helena stays very still. She makes her breathing quiet. She tries not to blink. She’s good. She’s trying.

Sarah stands up and tugs S through the doorway; they have a conversation in the hallway, and Helena catches whatever pieces of it she can get and shoves them in her mouth.

_Psychopath – dangerous – cult shite, she wants to – DYAD – dangerous – why not let her – Kira – I can’t just – dangerous – feral mutts always – killer – loves me. Or she thinks she does, I don’t know._

_I do_ , Helena thinks, urgently. She does. But Sarah told her not to move, so she can’t go running into the hallway to tell them. She’ll just have to be even better. She’ll take out every sharp thing in the world, and then Sarah will know that Helena loves her. And that will be enough.

Helena’s stomach growls, loud and lonely. She lets her eyes go to the sandwich. It’s so white. It’s so clean. The plate, the bread, the perfect line of peanut butter. She wants it so badly. She swallows down the spit in her mouth and keeps watching it, patiently, waiting for Sarah to come in and tell her she can eat it.


End file.
